The Kingdom of Gods

“I am Sieh.” No hint of recognition in either of them. I stifled a sigh.

She nodded and gestured to her brother. “This is Dekarta.”

Just as bad. I shook my head and got to my feet. “Well, I’ve wasted enough time,” I said, “and you two should be getting back.” Outside the palace, I could feel the sun setting. For a moment I closed my eyes, waiting for the familiar, delicious vibration of my father’s return to the world, but of course there was nothing. I felt fleeting disappointment.

The children jumped up in unison. “Do you come here to play often?” asked the boy, just a shade too eagerly.

“Such lonely little cubs,” I said, and laughed. “Has no one taught you not to talk to strangers?”

Of course no one had. They looked at each other in that freakish speaking-without-words-or-magic thing that twins do, and the boy swallowed and said to me, “You should come back. If you do, we’ll play with you.”

“Will you, now?” It had been a long time since I’d played. Too long. I was forgetting who I was amid all this worrying. Better to leave the worry behind, stop caring about what mattered, and do what felt good. Like all children, I was easy to seduce.

“All right, then,” I said. “Assuming, of course, that your mother doesn’t forbid it” — which guaranteed that they would never tell her — “I’ll come back to this place on the same day, at the same time, next year.”

They looked horrified and exclaimed in unison, “Next year?”

“The time will pass before you know it,” I said, stretching to my toes. “Like a breeze through a meadow on a light spring day.” It would be interesting to see them again, I told myself, because they were still young and would not become as foul as the rest of the Arameri for some while. And, because I had already grown to love them a little, I mourned, for the day they became true Arameri would most likely be the day I killed them. But until then, I would enjoy their innocence while it lasted.

I stepped between worlds and away.

The next year I stretched and climbed out of my nest and stepped across space again, and appeared at the top of the Nowhere Stair. It was early yet, so I amused myself conjuring little moons and chasing them up and down the steps. I was winded and sweaty when the children arrived and spied me.

“We know what you are,” blurted Deka, who had grown an inch.

“Do you, now? Whoops —” The moon I’d been playing with made a bid to escape, shooting toward the children because they stood between it and the corridor. I sent it home before it could put a hole in either of them. Then I grinned and flopped onto the floor, my legs splayed so as to take up as much space as possible, and caught my breath.

Deka crouched beside me. “Why are you out of breath?”

“Mortal realm, mortal rules,” I said, waving a hand in a vague circle. “I have lungs, I breathe, the universe is satisfied, hee-ho.”

“But you don’t sleep, do you? I read that godlings don’t sleep. Or eat.”

“I can if I want to. Sleeping and eating aren’t that interesting, so I generally don’t. But it looks a bit odd to forgo breathing — makes mortals very anxious. So I do that much.”

He poked me in the shoulder. I stared at him.

“I was seeing if you were real,” he said. “The book said you could look like anything.”

“Well, yes, but all of those things are real,” I replied.

“The book said you could be fire.”

I laughed. “Which would also be real.”

He poked me again, a shy grin spreading across his face. I liked his smile. “But I couldn’t do this to fire.” He poked me a third time.

“Watch it,” I said, giving him A Look. But it wasn’t serious, and he could tell, so he poked me again. With that I leapt on him, tickling, because I cannot resist an invitation to play. So we wrestled and he squealed and struggled to get free and complained that he would pee if I kept it up, and then he got a hand free and started tickling me back, and it actually did tickle awfully, so I curled up to escape him. It was like being drunk, like being in one of Yeine’s newborn heavens, so sweet and so perfect and so much delicious fun. I love being a god!

But a hint of sour washed across my tongue. When I lifted my head, I saw that Deka’s sister stood where he had left her, shifting from foot to foot and trying not to look like she yearned to join us. Ah, yes — someone had already told her that girls had to be dignified while boys could be rowdy, and she had foolishly listened to that advice. (One of many reasons I’d settled on a male form myself. Mortals said fewer stupid things to boys.)